Eamon de Valera
Eamon "Dev" de Valera (14 October 1882 – 29 August 1975) was President of Ireland from 1 April 1919 to 9 January 1922, succeeding Cathal Brugha and preceding Arthur Griffith, and again from 25 June 1959 to 24 June 1973, succeeding Sean T. O'Kelly and preceding Erskine H. Childers. De Valera was the only leader of the 1916 Easter Rising to escape execution (due to his US citizenship), and he led the Irish independence cause during the Irish War of Independence and the anti-treaty Irish Republican Army forces during the Irish Civil War. After the war, De Valera would become the founder of Fianna Fail, a conservative political party, and he served as President again from 1959 to 1973. Biography Eamon de Valera was born in New York City, New York, United States on 14 October 1882 to a Spanish artist and an Irish immigrant from County Limerick. His father died when he was just three years old, and he moved to Ireland after this unfortunate event. De Valera was a diligent student and a skilled rugby student while he attended school in Ireland, and he would later become a teacher. In 1913, De Valera joined the Irish Volunteers before being sworn into the secret Irish Republican Brotherhood. In 1916, he was tasked with covering the southeastern approaches of Dublin during the Easter Rising, and he was the only battalion commander not to be executed by the British Army after the uprising was crushed; he was a US citizen at a time when the United Kingdom needed the United States to assist the war effort during World War I, he was relatively unknown, and he had no nationalist family members. When the Republic of Ireland was proclaimed in 1919 at the start of the Irish War of Independence, Eamon was named president, and he called on the Irish Republican Army to halt its terrorist ambushes and use conventional methods to fight against the British. However, De Valera opposed the signing of a peace treaty between the UK and the IRA, and the downfall of his government in the 1922 elections led to the Irish Civil War. De Valera emerged as the political leader of the anti-treaty IRA during the civil war, and he decided to found the conservative Fianna Fail party to take part in the new government after the war's end; his old Sinn Fein party refused to enter the political system of the British-aligned Irish Free State. Fianna Fail stood on a populist platform, and De Valera outlawed the IRA, abolished the oath of allegiance to the British crown, ended the Free State, and instituted several liberal reforms; it would not be until the 1950s that the party would shift towards conservatism. From 1937 to 1948, from 1951 to 1954, and from 1957 to 1959, De Valera served as Taoiseach (Prime Minister) of Ireland, and he served as President of Ireland from 1959 to 1973. His reign was marked by economic and cultural stagnation, with his ideology evolving from militant nationalism to conservatism. De Valera died on 29 August 1975 at the age of 92. Gallery De Valera Collins Boland.png|De Valera, Michael Collins, and Harry Boland during the Easter Rising in 1916 De Valera Dail Eireann.png|De Valera in the Dail Eireann, 1921 De Valera protest.png|De Valera speaking out against the Anglo-Irish Treaty Category:1882 births Category:1975 deaths Category:Irish presidents Category:Irish Category:Presidents Category:Catholics Category:Politicians Category:Irish politicians Category:Americans Category:Irish-Americans Category:Spanish-Americans Category:IRA Category:Sinn Fein members Category:Irish conservatives Category:Conservatives Category:Fianna Fail members Category:People from New York City Category:People from New York Category:American emigrants to Ireland